The fire towers of Canada’s boreal forests set the stage for Vivian Demuth’s first novel Eyes of the Forest, published by local Smoky Peace Press.
“It’s set amongst the community of forestry mountain fire lookouts during an unusually hot, dry summer,” said Demuth who works as a local firetower lookout on Nose Mountain south of Grande Prairie each summer.
Known locally for her poetry and the annual Poetry on the Peaks event she organizes each year at Nose Mountain, Demuth will launch her first novel with an author tour, starting in Grande Prairie April 23.
She’ll be reading some excerpts from the novel at Grande Prairie Regional College in Room 224, starting at 7:30 p.m.
The novel starts out with the main character, Daphne, undergoing a research experiment in a neuro science lab where she is exposed to electromagnetic fields, which enable her to see her deceased mother.
“Daphne hopes that at the fire lookout during the electro-magnetic field generated by lightning that she might again see her mother,” explained Demuth, in a recent interview from her winter home in New York City. Instead, the ghost of a forest ranger haunts her at the fire lookout and warns her about an impending environmental disaster.
“Then Daphne’s lover Chris, who is a tree planter, goes missing in the woods,” continued Demuth. “Then the other fire lookouts in the novel become involved in these events.”
One of the themes of the novel is loss, said Demuth, noting the weather and work of fire lookouts also play into the story.
“There is also reference to global warming with intense fire and drought and insect infestation,” she added.
Demuth’s work has long been inspired by her connection to nature through her work as a park ranger and firetower lookout.
“I still get goosebumps when I talk about this,” she noted. “In the first draft, the main character, Daphne, had a helicopter crash at her fire tower.” In the published version, the helicopter crash takes place further away, so Daphne doesn’t deal with it directly.
“It is a sad coincidence that when the book was being published last summer there was that terrible helicopter crash at Nose Mountain,” said Demuth. She received a Distinguished Service Award from Alberta Forestry for her courage in providing first aid emergency services to three survivors and one victim of that crash.
The author said her first novel is only autobiographical in the sense she works as a fire lookout.
“There is a ghost in the novel and I’ve never talked to a ghost. I did have a seemingly ghostly experience at one of the lookouts and I was inspired by that,” she chuckled.
“I’ve been inspired by working on a lookout and watching the relationships between people and the landscape and the weather. Watching the relationships and being visited by different people who work out there as well,” she said.
Demuth, whose last book was a poetry collection titled Breathing Nose Mountain, was the recipient of the Sara Tucker Fiction Award from Long Island University, New York. Last fall, she received a Canada Council Travel Grant to travel to the Can Serrat International Artist Center near Barcelona, Spain, where she spent a month as writer-in-residence. She noted she will be back at the fire lookout on Nose Mountain after the May long weekend.
The reading in Grande Prairie, April 23, is part of an 18-city/town tour put together by publisher Elroy Diemert, thanks to a grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Smoky Peace Press publishes an eclectic mix of creative genres and has put out a series of four anthologies that includes work from Canadian writers such as Lorna Crozier, Rudy Wiebe, Lee Maracle, Thomas Wharton, Glen Sorestad, Sharon Butala and Candace Savage, just to name a few.
Diemert is excited about the author tour, noting Demuth “is a very dynamic writer.”
For more information on Smoky Peace Press, or Vivian Demuth’s new book Eyes of the Forest, check out www. smokypeacepress.com.
Publisher: Kent Keebaugh Proprietor and published by Sun Media Corporation - A Quebecor Media Company at 10604 100 Street, Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada T8V6V4
